Fully or highly automated driving systems are designed to operate a vehicle on the road without driver interaction or other external control, for example, self-driving vehicles or autonomous vehicles. An autonomous vehicle is thus configured to traverse a planned path between its current position and a target future position without input from the driver. To traverse the planned path, the autonomous vehicle must account for behavior of objects within the environment, such as neighboring vehicles, pedestrians, or obstacles, and safely execute maneuvers taking the presence of such objects into account.
Prior art driving systems in autonomous vehicles account for current behavior of objects such as neighboring vehicles by relying on vehicle to vehicle communication, an impractical solution when many vehicles lack this technology, or by measuring a time to contact between vehicles to identify windows of opportunity for the autonomous vehicle to continue along its planned path. However, to improve safety and efficiency, a driving system in an autonomous vehicle will need to account for interactions between various objects within the environment and more accurately predict future behavior of these objects.